At the Parliament session Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan informed that at the trilateral meeting held in Brussels, an agreement was reached to form a bilateral Armenia-Azerbaijan commission dealing with delimitation and border security matters by the end of April and launch the work.
“What is our strategy in this matter? To clarify Azerbaijan’s official positions in the border issue, to officially record Armenia’s positions in the same matter, be maximally legitimate in our positions, meaning to use only the de-jure facts and arguments in clarifying the border, to obtain the acknowledgment of this legitimacy in the international community and based on this achieve an agreement regarding the Armenia-Azerbaijan borders,” Pashinyan says.
According to the Prime Minister, this means that in the delimitation process we should rely on de-jure significant facts for clarification of the territory of the Republic of Armenia and not on desires or conversations.
The PM added that after his Brussels visit he received strong criticism regarding abandoning the proposal of a reciprocal “mirror-like” withdrawal of troops.
“In this regard I have to say that in the past we’ve recorded for several times that the reciprocal withdrawal has never been a pre-condition from our side and we simply believe that a normal delimitation process is possible only regarding the borders where a certain level of security and stability exists, which unfortunately we can’t say about today’s Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
Our concern that Azerbaijan wants to maintain military tension on the border parallel with delimitation to justify territorial encroachments against Armenia and formulate new encroachments is eventually perceived by the international community, but we had also reached a dangerous line where the proposal of mirror-like withdrawal of troops could’ve been perceived as a policy of bringing the situation to a deadlock. That’s why, like I said at the March 31 Cabinet meeting, we had expressed readiness to be flexible and we displayed this flexibility in Brussels, hoping that the international community will be more attentive to the security environment along the border,” the Prime Minister says.
Pashinyan emphasized that in Brussels they didn’t reach an agreement on delimitation from scratch, but rather completed the 2021 November 26 Sochi agreements, and this has created the basis that in the event of necessity Russia, Western countries or other partners would provide necessary support in the delimitation work with their information and experience.
He added that the bilateral commission will have two mandates: the delimitation of borders and ensuring security and stability along the border. “This means that the commission will have some authority to monitor the border situation, and also the possibility to make concrete proposals for increasing the level of security and stability in the borders. In case of necessity it will be possible to involve an international expert potential in this process,” he says.
The PM added that they are now working on the format and individual composition of the commission and it should be clarified until the end of April. “Our relevant officials in this period must work with the Azerbaijani side and reach common grounds in this organizational matter,” Pashinyan says.
